Sunday, October 3, 2010

[Guide] Choking powder

The choking powder (powder for short) is a major perk available only to assassin class via AA tree.

The powder takes two slots on your alternative bar, consumes 2 shards upon use and has 2m cool down.

When applied it:

- stops any combo or spell in progress (animation/casting)

- prevents any spells from being cast for 3s (silence)

First I have to say I truly love this perk and IMHO it is the best stuff we can get from the assassin class AA tree. It greatly buffs up survivability (via preventing the combo/spell from pwning your ass) can act as anti cc (preventing cc from being applied to you) and as a form of cc (not being able to attack/cast is being cced in my book)

Accessibility

Powder requires both lighting fast reaction as well as good timing. Having powder bound under accessible key is vital! Make sure that you can use the powder via one of the keys that are close to the ones that you are using form movement. Please note that powder is heavy on shard consumption and that it will be hard to support this perk without going hybrid and having 2 means of instant shard regeneration.

Stopping combo/spell

First make sure that you have "timer bar" switched on via settings. This little bar will show you what your target is doing. When it comes to spells use powder at the very last second of casting so your opponent will waste time and stand still while taking the punishment. When it comes to combos its quite the opposite: use powder as soon as combo animation starts because you need to reduce the damage as much as possible.

Stopping the CCs

This is the main part of my love for the powder. What is the very first thing your opponent will try to do when he comes out of your cc like fear/stun? He will try to CC you back and there is not a thing you can do about it because he has 5s immunity to major cc (it prevents the dreaded CC-lock). Well the powder doesn't count as any type of cc so it is not affected by immunities . You can do 2 things as your opponent comes out of cc:

If he is melee - wait for his CC animation to start. Great example are the barbarians who's animations are very easy to recognize.

If he is a caster/assassin - apply the powder at the last second of CC duration (observe his characters posture - when the CC is over he will stand straight for a second) so your opponent is affected by the 3s silence.

Couple of more examples:

Bear shamans - they just love to go out of CC and use their stun to aoe CC and heal them self up. Choking powder not only denies them the CC but also the much needed heal

The powder has cone aoe effect so even without any timing it is a great thing to pop in front of fighting crowd (perfect for minigames) and you are bound to affect the outcome of the skirmish. Powder also can bring people out of stealth. Right now the most sure method of popping out of hide is death's whirlwind, but that very heavy on shards so the powder, while not as reliable, can yield same results with lower shard costs. Furthermore the powder can be a great "run away tool" - use it just before you are going to "leg it" to avoid the nasty "stagger" cc being applied because your back is turned.

Powder in solo PVE

When used against mobs it will stop them for 1 second which, when pounded on by several mobs, can be a life saver. Other than that the mobs do have their own casting/combos (specially tamarim's tigers mobs which have a combo called whirling blades) so the usage of powder is same as in pvp.

About Me:

"The blond myth of Aquilonia"
Playing Age of Conan since may 2008. I have been PvPing with assassin class throught out all the changes and revamps.Currently playing on Fury PVP server. Whisper /w Slith to contact me.